Starting a technology company was something that I did thinking that it would be anything but what it turned out to be. It has been fun, dirty, educational, tiring, invigorating, difficult, tough, stressful and life-altering. When I started Motribe I just thought it would be something fun to do instead of being employed!I was fortunate enough to have amazing support from Justin Stanford, Anton van Vlaanderen, Doug Cherry, Laurence Olivier and Erik van Vlaanderen who collective form the
4Di Capital team. 4Di provided Motribe with an initial seed investment and a follow-on investment. They showed faith in our business and in me as a leader (although I'm sure they had their doubts from time to time!) and I'm incredibly grateful to them for that. Hopefully in the future we'll work together again.Founding, building and keeping Motribe alive and kicking for the past two years has been the most rewarding experience of my career. It has also been the most difficult thing that I've ever had to do. Startups in the mobile tech space are easy to begin but extremely difficult to get right and fortunately at Motribe I think that the team managed to get it right.The proof of this pudding is in the selling.Over the past two years I have traveled to London, New York, Texas, Kenya and many other places in search of business opportunities and investment for Motribe. I was turned away many times and succeeded many times. I've taken risks that worked and many that didn't. I've trusted people who have become my closest friends and kept close people who have taught me some of the most important business lessons I'll ever learn.From securing our first client within a week of launching the platform to partnering up with Mxit to launch two incredible apps that my team came up with and executed perfectly, we did what needed to be done.In year one we took up the "Fuck Yeah!" phrase as our company motto. That perfectly sums up the first year of a startup; excited, ambitious and a fuck-yeah attitude to everything. We had tough times in that year, we hired staff, fired staff, signed new clients and lost old ones. We went from having almost no money in the bank to soaring and hiring our current team of 9 people.In year two I was inspired by
Gary Vaynerchuck who at some point said: "Hustle your face off." And that's what we did in year two; hustle young man, hustle.After two very short years I am happy to announce that we have successfully sold
Motribe to Mxit, Africa's largest social network. You can read the first article written about it here:
Mxit buys mobile social network builder, Motribe.It's never easy parting with something that you have invested so much time, effort, blood, sweat and sleepless nights into and this is no different. Mxit is a thriving company with many people to do what needs to be done. I am a starter and an entrepreneur. That's where my heart lies and I believe that's where my passion will continue to grow. I am leaving the Motribe team to seek out new inspiration and the next big idea for the African Continent.I need to thank my team for their solid support and amazing work to get Motribe to where it is today. You are an amazing group of people who all have very bright futures. A founder is only as good as the team he can assemble. It's often said that you should hire people smarter than yourself, I think I did that extremely successfully.For now - I'm taking some time off, going snowboarding, walking my puppy and enjoying the coming Cape Town Summer.I have learned a lot over the past 2 years and in the last 6 months especially. I'll be sure to transfer my learnings into a few articles on this blog soon.
